No, these are not our newest pets. They are what I refer to as "Mom and Dad Homework." In the elementary classrooms, it is very common to have a Build A Bear animal of some kind that is the class buddy. This little stuffed animal has a journal and he goes home with a different child every weekend. The child is then responsible for taking pictures of all the activities that they do with their little buddy and writing a story in the journal about the weekend. Of course, what this really means is that Mom and Dad need to remember to take the stuffed animal EVERYWHERE, take pictures (while people stare at you strangely) and spend an hour or so on Sunday evening compiling the pictures and details of the weekend into an entertaining vignette for the class to read on Monday morning.
May I just say a big Thanks to those overachieving parents out there who apparently have nothing better to do than take these stuffed animals on cruises and other exciting adventures and document them with advanced scrapbooking techniques. This leaves the rest of us valiantly attempting to embellish our weekend comissary trips into something exciting so as not to disappoint our children. Fabulous.
The Wells' Family has had two of these little visitors in two weekends, leading me to conclude that they send them home on the "last name" schedule. Last weekend we had Spike the Bear from Samantha's PreK class and this weekend was Jack the Turtle from Kaitlyn's 1st grade room. The girls were thrilled and I mentally added " write exciting and entertaining adventure, decorate tastefully with glitter glue and assorted scrapbooking items." to my internal to do list. This notation was quickly followed with a"purchase ridiculously adorable scrapbooking items at craft store" note, considering that I rarely have the time to purchase such things, categorize them, and design exquisite memory pages. I like to justify this lack of motherly memory book creation by reminding myself that I am too busy living and creating memories to document them. The reality is probably that I am too busy running less than thrilling errands and operating as my children's personal taxi to various sporting and social events to document a darn thing. Someday........someday, I will have beautiful scrapbooks filled with adorable pages and witty commentary................maybe when I'm 80.....
Anyway......Spike the Bear and Jack the Turtle both attended 4 hour dance practices with my dance team as they are prepping for a big comptition in the spring and we had choreography classes. They also attended the girls' gymnastics classes. Of course, it wasn't all me and the girls. Duane was not going to be outdone by the overachieving, scrapbooking mommies of the PreK and 1st grade set. He took both Spike and Jack on adventures at the reptile house and with the statue of Big John the Alligator who is very realistic in pictures, mind you. Apparently realistic enough to scare a few 4 year olds in Sam's class.....oops. I wrote a story about the girls and their "buddies" wrestling the Alligator and saving Ranger Battalion. All in all, we had a great time taking pics and writing outlandish stories about Jack and Spike. The girls were thrilled and Duane has declared himself the coolest Dad in the elementary hallway for providing Jack and Spike a weekend of girls (my dancers) and wild adventure. Not to boast or anything, but I think I can say with some certainty that our stories were the best in the journal.
So bring it on scrap booking moms with waterfront mansions and cruises! We've got alligators and snakes and dancing girls here at the Wells' house and who can compete with that??
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